10 May 2006

London's Imperial College is launching a project with the aim of making it possible to access the Internet without needing any wires at all.

Although many buildings and offices do already offer a degree of wireless Internet access within them, these sites must still be attached to the public Internet by external routers and through phone lines, T1 wires or optical fibres.

The purpose of Imperial's project is to remove the need for wires completely, replacing them instead with advanced antennae and constructing a network of routers capable of relaying and receiving information both to and from the public Internet.

Professor Kim Leung, who is coordinating the project, explained: "The Internet has become an integral part of our daily life and continues to grow.

"Instead of relying on the use of traditional wired lines, we need to explore alternative, efficient technologies to connect users in homes and office buildings to the Internet.

"Our challenge here is to invent an integrated set of new antennae and wireless networking technologies that can work together efficiently to meet such needs. We are hoping that we could see this technology in use within the next five to ten years."

Making Internet access completely wireless would serve several purposes, notably boosting accessibility in remote and rural areas where it is literally physically impossible to actually install the wires that would otherwise be required.

The antennae would also provide for the first time the capacity to run the Internet at high speeds and yet at low prices, as ADSL and T1 wires can only carry limited amounts of information, while optical fibres are somewhat expensive to use.

© Adfero Ltd

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